Page 38

Not long afterwards, but long enough, Greville woke at Somers’ touch, one hand gripping his shoulder before swiftly letting go. Cressida was gone, the expanse of bed linen beside him now cold to the touch.

‘Sir, you’d best come downstairs.’ Somers spoke in a low voice, pregnant with all the warning that Greville needed.

In the drawing room, there was no sign of Bute.

Greville felt a wave of cold revulsion at the thought of laying eyes on his host, and if Gunn had either sense or compassion, he would have dosed the man with enough laudanum to fell a drayhorse.

Instead, Greville found Kitty and Byron at the small mother-of-pearl-inlaid table pulled close to the fire.

They were sharing a decanter of port and another of brandy with Cleveland, the bloody man’s fair hair gilded in the firelight.

For one crazed moment, Greville saw double.

A second slender, fair-haired man sat at the table with them, his back to the door, clad in a jacket of charcoal twill with an exquisite set across his lean, muscular shoulders.

Greville took a hold of himself: there was only one Cleveland.

The second man – cut from the same very expensive cloth – was his brother, Arthur Lascelles.

For once George Byron didn’t look as if he were enjoying the tension but rather sat with his fingers steepled on the tabletop. He cut Greville completely, not even looking at him.

‘Would anyone like to explain?’ Greville said.

Cleveland leaned back in his chair, eyebrows slightly lifted. ‘I’ll leave that to my dear brother.’

Lascelles spoke without turning around. ‘Get a chair. You’re going to need to sit down.’

Greville lounged against the fireplace. ‘I’ll survive.’

Lascelles waved one gloved hand at the nearest decanter. ‘I’d have thought you’ll want one of those, at least. To begin with, you and I must go back to Spain, Greville. Wellington is on the move again. As for the rest, it’s sensitive.’

It was always like this: the army came before everything.

Lascelles clearly knew something was in the air, not that he could speak of it here.

Soon Greville would be scouting ahead of the lines with his men, guiding Allied troops away from ambush by the French, lying in foxholes with his rifle again. Kitty’s expression was unreadable.

‘Go on,’ Greville said. ‘We’re all out in the open here; I don’t think we’ve a skeleton left in the cupboard between us.’

Lascelles gave him a quick, calculating glance and not for the first time Greville felt the cold force of his intelligence probing through his mind like the questing articulated legs of a spider in deep, velvet darkness.

‘Fine, if that’s how you wish to play it.

There are several matters that Greville and I must deal with at speed before we go back to Santander.

’ He turned to Kitty. ‘For a start, I’m afraid your brother Charles has been arrested on suspicion of inciting sedition.

He’s not well enough to be moved, of course, but the house is being watched. ’

‘Poor Crauford and Marianne.’ Kitty let out a cry of shock, as though she’d just been struck a physical blow. Greville rested one hand upon her shoulder with a brief squeeze.

‘You must go home first, Greville,’ Kitty said. In the candlelight, her long-lashed eyes looked enormous, glittering with reined-in emotion. ‘You can’t leave Crauford and Mama to manage this.’

‘Did you know Chas had those sympathies, Nightingale?’ Lascelles asked.

Before Greville could answer, they both turned to the door on instinct and watched Jamie come in.

‘If they’ve arrested Chas, it’s because they should have arrested me,’ Jamie said, closing the door behind him.

‘It only needed this, did it not?’ Cleveland said, looking bored.

‘Don’t look at me like that, Grev,’ Jamie went on.

‘It’s not as if I don’t know what Lascelles does out in Spain; everyone knows that the Corps of Guides deals in intelligence.

But if you think I’m just going to let Chas be accused of all manner of treason just because he was mistaken for me, you don’t know me at all, and I don’t care if Lascelles knows it or not. ’

Kitty rested her elbows on the table and put both hands over her face. Byron placed one arm around her shoulders and she sank into his embrace: as ever, he was attuned to the needs of the nearest woman.

‘You might have a little consideration for your cousin’s feelings, however, James.’ Byron was as languid as ever but Jamie coloured at his words.

‘You can hardly talk,’ he said. ‘For all your hot air about rebellion and religion and changing the bloody world, and hypocrisy, why don’t you ever actually do something to bring about change? One speech in the House of Lords and I suppose you think that’s your job done—’

‘When this juvenile display is at an end,’ Cleveland interrupted, ‘perhaps my brother will be good enough to tell us why he’s really here.’

‘It’s the house party of the year, Duke,’ Byron said, in a careless tone of voice that Greville had only ever heard him use when dangerously angry. Ignoring Jamie, Byron poured a brandy for Kitty. ‘Don’t worry, angel, one day all this will be nothing more than an anecdote.’

‘I rather doubt it,’ Kitty said, but she drained the glass of brandy all the same.

Greville watched Lascelles across the table; he was as immaculate as ever and despite having dressed for the countryside in twill rather than superfine, he looked as if he’d stepped out of White’s less than five minutes before.

All the same, Greville caught the faintest hint of woodsmoke and fresh air: Lascelles had spent more time outdoors than one might at first guess.

‘Let Jamie finish,’ Greville declared. ‘You were big with news when you came in. We can unravel this mess with Chas at our leisure. What is it?’

Jamie folded his arms, glancing out of the window at the black waters of Loch Iffrin.

‘That preventive’s here – MacGuigan,’ he said.

‘Lilias Tait saw him patrolling near the mooring earlier this morning, and now he’s at the house.

Tait’s holding him off, but Mrs Scudamore says she’s sure MacGuigan doesn’t believe him. ’

Greville caught Byron’s eye just before he managed to conceal his fear: here was a scandal that some of this house party would not survive, with fame and public adulation no protection.

‘If that’s the local preventive and he’s lifted that cargo already, you’ll have to kill him to keep this quiet,’ Lascelles said, as though they were discussing how best to deal with a rat problem.

Greville knew in that moment Lascelles was talking about more than a few barrels of free-traded cognac: he understood about the weapons, too.

Kitty rose then, holding up both hands for silence, her hair dishevelled from Byron’s embrace.

‘Don’t any of you say a word. Not a word.

I don’t even want to know why it’s a point of concern that the local preventive officer has arrived at this house, but I’m going to the kitchen and I’m going to tell Fraser MacGuigan that his wife has gone into labour at Leirinmore.

’ She glared at them all, one after the other.

‘Mrs MacGuigan nearly died last time and they lost the baby, so I’d be willing to wager that he’ll go, and you’ll get at least one or two hours to do whatever it is you need to do, and I hope to goodness I never know what it is. ’

She went out, closing the door behind her.

‘I don’t want to know, either,’ Cleveland said.

Greville smiled at them all. ‘No, Cleveland, you really do not. We’re going to retrieve that cargo of weapons,’ he said, watching Cleveland roll his eyes, ‘and before Fraser MacGuigan comes back to look for it himself, we’re going to drop it in the North Atlantic where no one will ever find it, do you understand?

To hell with your armed uprising, Jamie, and your ideals: give those men guns and you may as well escort them to the gallows. ’

One, two. Greville counted beats in the silence before he spoke, watching how Jamie exchanged a swift glance with Byron, who just shrugged.

‘Harder than it looks to rebuild society from the ground up, James, is it not?’ Byron said, pushing up the sash window.

‘I hate to be childish, but if MacGuigan’s already in the house, I rather think this is our best way out.

I can’t bear men like him, mealy-mouthed self-righteous puritan arseholes. ’

Greville hadn’t seen Cressida since the moment they fell asleep in each other’s arms; for now, he could do nothing but ignore the growing, ugly sense of misgiving.